"Guilt By Association"

Remember when the Second Vermont Republic founder, Thomas Naylor, used to rave on about being tarred with the "guilt by association" brush? Seems he was against "guilt by association" when he felt his lo-o-ongtime connection to racist and white supremacist groups like the League of the South, a group from which he drew a number of early and continuing advisory board members, was being used to "(tarnish) the Second Vermont Republic’s reputation." [1] Naylor's leveled the same "guilt by association" charge against Seven Day's Shay Totten. [2] He's complained that the Southern Poverty Law Center has guilted him by his associations [3] , along with whining similarly about this and other blogs. [4]

Literally wrapping his supposedly anti-war self in the flag (a war flag associated with Vermont military institutions for more than two hundred years [5] and even now being carried into battle in Afghanistan and Iraq by units of the Vermont National Guard as its regimental flag), Naylor seems to never let an opportunity slip past to show what a duplicitous hypocrite he's capable of being. Naylor has put up a post criticising Vermont Republican gubernatorial candidate, Brian Dubie, for the "the company... he keeps." Naylor's anointed candidate for the same post, Connecticut native Dennis Steele, has launched his "I Don't Get No Respect" tour of the state for this week [6] and Naylor has pulled out all the stops, both rhetorically and monetarily, launching a media blitz seeking to drag Steele across the finish line somehow, and so is nowadays for promoting "guilt by association."

Brian Dubie’s Jean Charest Connection

"If it is true that you can tell a man by the company which he keeps, then the voters of Vermont had better beware. Not content with a recent fund raising rendezvous with former President George W. Bush in the Adirondacks, Brian Dubie is now flaunting his relationship with Quebec Premier Jean Charest in a television advertisement. Dubie is shown warmly shaking Charest’s hand in the opening clip of the television advertisement.

What has not been made clear to Vermont voters is that Premier Charest is currently the object of a major scandal in Quebec. Charest’s former justice minister Marc Bellemare has accused Charest of pressuring him to appoint judges with close ties to Quebec Liberal Party fundraisers as well as the corrupt construction industry.

Dubie presents himself as a cost-cutting, no-new-taxes, political conservative. Jean Charest is no conservative.

What is the exact nature of Brian Dubie’s relationship to Jean Charest and his Liberal Party Quebec government? Who is the real Brian Dubie?

Vive Le Vermont Libre

Thomas H. Naylor"

September 15, 2010 [7]

Now cue "Vermont Commons" and SVR's chief propagandist, Rob Williams, to explain how it's not bad "guilt by association" when Naylor's doing it, but when anyone else points out the stench coming from the white supremacist secessionists at the League of the South that Naylor's conventions and writings support and whose counsel he's sought over the years, it's somehow unfair to suggest that Vermonters should "beware... (of) the company which (Naylor) keeps".